Symbian Foundation (led by Nokia) is working on a unified and open Symbian platform and is currently developing the operating system based on the Finnish giant's original platform and of course it inherits some elements of Sony Ericsson's UIQ system. The Symbian^2 edition (coming this year) offers full Series 60 5th Edition compatibility, but we should expect some serious changes by next year. The Symbian^4 edition, planned for late 2010, is based on a completely new foundation and breaks up with Series 60's Avkon user interface, this being swapped for the platform-independent Qt interface, which is used by Nokia on an increasing number of products already. This step, although it's completely logical and nearly inevitable, will lead to serious issues, as most current S60 applications won't be compatible with the new system, with the exception of a couple of system software, which didn't make use of the GUI's services.
Translated by Szaszati
